Fabrizio Antonioli

National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology | INGV · National Earthquake Centre

Tidal notches, long regarded as reliable indicators of mean sea level, have been extensively studied along carbonate coasts in the central Mediterranean Sea. Previous studies revealed a correlation between the genesis of tidal notches and tidal range, lithology, cliff foot depth, and wave energy. In the 2020 Geoswim campaigns at Lampedusa, the sout...

Tidal notches, long regarded as reliable indicators of mean sea level, have been extensively studied along carbonate coasts in the central Mediterranean Sea. Previous studies revealed a correlation between the genesis of tidal notches and tidal range, lithology, cliff foot depth and wave energy. In the 2020 Geoswim campaign at Lampedusa, the southe...

The Lambousa fishtank, an archaeological structure entirely carved in bedrock, can be easily recognized and measured in the plan on Google Earth (GE). We surveyed in situ this excellent archaeological marker in 2016 through direct measurements using traditional field instruments, such as metric tapes and invar rods, and terrestrial photogrammetry u...

The Lambousa fishtank, an archaeological structure entirely carved in bedrock, can be easily recognized and measured in plan on Google Earth (GE). We surveyed in situ this excellent archaeological marker in 2016 through direct measurements using traditional field measurements, such as metric tapes and invar rods, and terrestrial photogrammetry, usi...

Sea caves are a type of cave formed primarily by the wave action of the sea. The coastal scenery of the Gozitan coast is very interesting in that sea caves and other coastal landforms, such as sea arches, develop at the sea level. We mapped seventy-nine semi-submerged sea caves opening at the sea level, five completely submerged sea caves, seven se...

The Geoswim programme is an expedition-type project which is aiming to survey, monitor and measure the entire perimeter of rocky coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. The project officially started in 2012 with the first one-man survey of 193.4 km by snorkeling along the northeastern Adriatic coasts, and is ongoing. So far, 559.5 km of rocky coasts have...

Tidal notches are thought to form at the sea level, with well-defined morphometric features with respect to the sea level reference. Antonioli et al. (2015) described the morphometric parameters of more than 70 tidal notches in the Mediterranean area. Anyway, some variations can occur. In particular, at the southern coast of Lampedusa (Pelagie Isla...

Marine terraces are key landforms for the identification of spatial and temporal pattern of tectonic deformation through time. A marine terrace is any relatively flat surface of marine origin, bounded by a steeper slope inshore and offshore. Marine terraces may result from marine abrasion or weathering, or consist of shallow water accumulations of...

Coastal dynamics are the result of several processes controlling the balance between sediment input and output over time. The beach system is not always able to maintain a neutral coastal balance due to natural and anthropogenic causes. We present an integrated marine geology, geomorphological and sea-level rise analysis in the coastal sector betwe...

Since 2012 the Geoswim programme has been investigating coastal landforms along the Mediterranean rocky shores and their lateral variations, through snorkelling and field surveys. The focus of Geoswim investigation is collecting physical/chemical and ecological data relevant to the evaluation of past to future sea level changes. In spring 2017 we e...

Investigation of sea-level positions during the highly-dynamic Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3: 29–61 kyrs BP) proves difficult because: (i) in stable and subsiding areas, coeval coastal sediments are currently submerged at depths of few to several tens of meters below the present sea level; (ii) in uplifting areas, the preservation of geomorphic fea...

Investigation of sea-level positions during the highly-dynamic Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3: 29-61 kyrs BP) proves difficult because: i) in stable and subsiding areas, coeval coastal sediments are currently submerged at depths of few to several tens of meters below present sea level; ii) in uplifting areas, the preservation of geomorphic features...

Areas of the Mediterranean Sea are dynamic habitats in which human activities have been conducted for centuries and which feature micro-tidal environments with about 0.40 m of range. For this reason, human settlements are still concentrated along a narrow coastline strip, where any change in the sea level and coastal dynamics may impact anthropic a...

The city of Venice and the surrounding lagoonal ecosystem are highly vulnerable to variations in relative sea level. In the past ∼150 years, this was characterized by an average rate of relative sea-level rise of about 2.5 mm/year resulting from the combined contributions of vertical land movement and sea-level rise. This literature review reassess...

The Mediterranean Basin is characterized by a significant variability in tectonic behaviour, ranging from subsidence to uplifting. However, those coastal areas considered to be tectonically stable show coastal landforms at elevations consistent with eustatic and isostatic sea level change models. In particular, geomorphological indicators—such as t...

Investigation of sea-level positions during the highly-dynamic Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3: 29-61 kyrs BP) proves difficult because: i) in stable and subsiding areas, coeval coastal sediments are currently submerged at depths of few to several tens of meters below present sea level; ii) in uplifting areas, the preservation of geomorphic features...

This study presents a global overview of the submerged speleothems used to reconstruct paleo sea levels and reports new results from two stalactites collected in the Mediterranean Sea. Coastal cave deposits significantly contributed to the understanding of global and regional sea-level variations during the Middle and Late Quaternary. The studied s...

This study presents a world review as well as new additional data in form of submerged speleothems that are used for paleo sea level reconstructions. Speleothems significantly contributed to the understanding of the global and regional sea level variations during the Middle and Late Quaternary. The studied speleothems cover the last 1.4 Myr and are...

The investigation of submerged speleothems for sea level studies has made significant contributions to the understanding of the global and regional sea level variations during the Middle and Late Quaternary. This has especially been the case for the Mediterranean Sea, where more than 300 submerged speleothems sampled in 32 caves have been analysed...

The investigation of submerged speleothems for sea level studies has made significant contributions to the understanding of the global and regional sea level variations during the Middle and Late Quateranry. This has been especially the case for the Mediterranean Sea, where more than 300 submerged speleothems sampled in 32 caves have been analysed...

Quaternary uplift is well documented in SE Sicily, a region prone to damaging seismic events, such as the 1693 “Val di Noto” earthquake (Mw 7.4), the largest seismic event reported within the Italian Earthquake Catalogue, whose seismogenic source is still debated and, consequently, the long‐term seismic hazard is poorly understood. However, the spa...

The City of Venice and the surrounding lagoonal ecosystem are highly vulnerable to variations in relative sea level. In the past ~150 years, this was characterized by a secular linear trend of about 2.5 mm/year resulting from the combined contributions of vertical land movement and sea-level rise. This literature review reassesses and synthesizes t...

The endemic Mediterranean reef building vermetid gastropods Dendropoma petraeum complex (Dendropoma spp) and Vermetus triquetrus develop bio-constructions (rims) on rocky shorelines at about Mean Sea Level (MSL) and are therefore commonly used as relative sea-level (RSL) markers. In this study, we use elevations and age data of vermetid reefs to (1...

The coasts of the Mediterranean Sea are dynamic habitats in which human activities have been conducted for centuries and which feature micro-tidal environments with about 0.40 m of range. For this reason, human settlements are still concentrated along a narrow coastline strip, where any change in the sea level and coastal dynamics may impact anthro...

This paper re-apprises the scant elephant remains belonging to a dwarf Palaeoloxodon of uncertain taxonomy collected during the 1980s from a cave on Favignana Island (Aegadian Archipelago, western Sicily). The elephant was recently ¹⁴C-dated to the Last Glacial Maximum (20,350–19,840 cal. BP), indicating that the Favignana elephant is likely the mo...

Italy has very few currently known finds of underwater archaeology from the Stone Age, despite a substantial history of geological and geoarchaeological investigation into sea-level change and archaeological investigations of underwater remains of coastal settlements and shipwrecks from later periods. Nevertheless, there are traces of prehistoric c...

The continental shelf morphology offshore of western Sicily suggests that during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 20 ka cal BP), two of the Egadi Islands, Favignana and Levanzo, were connected to Sicily by a wide emerged plain, while Marettimo was only separated from the other islands by a narrow channel. We studied the relative sea-level variation f...

The evolution of coastal and transitional environments depends upon the interplay of human activities and natural drivers, two factors that are strongly connected and many times conflicting. The urge for efficient tools for characterising and predicting the behaviour of such systems is nowadays particularly pressing, especially under the effects of...

In this paper, we present and discuss the spatial distribution of Tidal notches (Tn) along the western sector of Adriatic Sea as a marker of the coastal stability during late Holocene. Specifically, a 3.97 km long coastal reach at the Mt. Conero area has been investigated in relation to its geological and geomorphological peculiareties such as: i)...

Recent archaeological excavations at Mavra Litharia in the area of Aigeira (N Peloponnese) have brought to light the eastern landward extension of a jetty. The erosion of the cliff along the modern coast and the excavations at the inner side of the northern coastal section of the jetty provided a clearer picture of its structure, significantly diff...

We report detailed morphometric observations on several MIS 5.5 and a few older (MIS 11, 21, 25) fossil tidal notches shaped along carbonate coasts at 80 sites in the central Mediterranean Sea and at an additional six sites in the eastern and western Mediterranean. At each site, we performed precise measurements of the fossil tidal notch (FTN) widt...

Submerged caves represent potential archives of speleothems with continental and marine biogenic layers. In turn, these can be used to reconstruct relative sea-level changes. This study presents new data on the tectonic behaviour of the island of Malta during the Holocene. These data were obtained from a speleothem sampled, during an underwater sur...

Following the pioneering work of Schmiedt et al. (1972) on establishing the level of the Tyrrhenian Sea in Antiquity, a number of studies have examined this evidence from Roman Period fish tanks but with significantly different outcomes due primarily to different interpretations of the functional level of these pools at the time of their constructi...

Over the last few years many papers on sea level change was published without provide observational data in the field, only using large data base and computer, this involves frequent errors in the field data interpretation. © 2010 AIQUA - Associazione Italiana per lo Studio del Quaternario e EMMEVI - Servizio Congressi SPA.

The coastal areas of the central Mediterranean Sea are sensitive to climate change and the consequent relative sea level rise. Both phenomena may affect densely urbanized and populated areas, causing severe damages. Our maps show the land-marine flooding projections as effects of the expected relative sea level rise for four Italian coastal plains...

Boulders are frequently dislodged from rock platforms, transported and deposited along coastal zones by high-magnitude storm waves or tsunamis. Their size and shape are often controlled by the thickness of bedding planes as well as by high-angle to bedding fracture network. We investigate these processes along two coastal areas of Favignana Island...

In this paper we present and discuss data concerning the morphostructural evolution at Ustica Island (Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy) during Late Quaternary. New insights on the relative sea-level changes of Ustica are coming from data collected during a geomorphological field survey around the island, together with the bathymetric analysis of the surroundi...

Sr/ 86 Sr ages a b s t r a c t Ice-sheet and sea-level fluctuations during the Early and Middle Pleistocene are as yet poorly understood. A stalactite from a karst cave in North West Sicily (Italy) provides the first evidence of four marine inundations that correspond to relative sea-level highstands at the time of the Middle Pleistocene Transition...

This article reviews and discusses key data, literature, debates and discussions focussed on relative sea-level change since the Last Interglacial (approximately last ~132,000 years) in the Mediterranean Basin. Special reference is given to the geomorphological (physical and environmental) and archaeological (human and cultural) aspects of central...

Late Holocene (~6.5 ka) shorelines represented by tidal notches, beach deposits, wave-cut terraces and intertidal organic rims are raised from few decimetres up to 5.5 m above the present sea level in the southern part of the Calabrian Arc, southern Italy. At five localities (Capo Vaticano and Scilla in southern Calabria and Taormina, Schisò, Capo...

Through the analysis of geomorphological processes coupled to archaeological time markers in one selected site – Ognina in south-eastern Sicily – this paper investigates ritual practices and sacred places associated with sea-level change and shoreline locations. The interdisciplinary approach adopted in this research also provides new data on relat...

After the Last Glacial Maximum, some 21,000 years BP, the sea level rose from −130 m to its present-day position. This process of marine transgression inundated or eroded palaeolandscapes to varying degrees, resulting in the landward movement of the shoreline. The transgression velocity (TV), i.e., the velocity at which the shoreline migrated landw...

Central Mediterranean shelves show a large variability in morphology (width, slope, unevenness), stratigraphy (different thickness of depositional bodies resulting from the last climatic/eustatic cycle) and sedimentology (shelf-mud offshore of the main river mouths, bioclastic sediment in under-supplied areas) because of their geologically young ag...

We investigated archaeological sites located along the coasts of central Apulia (Italy) to estimate the relative sea level changes which have occurred in this region since the Bronze Age, and test the most recent model of predicted sea level for this region. Surveys focused on six sites located on both the Adriatic and Ionian coasts of Apulia at th...

The coast of the Mediterranean provide several remnants of ancient coastal quarries, which are now useful to study sea level change occurring during the last millennia. Millstones quarries were exploited with same quarrying techniques from rocks like beachrocks, sandstones or similar lithologies, were shaped to be suitable to grind olives, seeds an...

The study of archaeological structures has been widely applied in the Mediterranean to infer the past relative sea level (RSL), but the use of Prehistoric sites was generally scarce. Pre-Classical settlements related to past marine position are quite rare and, after their occupation phase the landscape has often dramatically changed. A peculiar sit...

We present and discuss the genesis, age and evolution of indented landforms carved at sea level in correspondence of carbonatic headlands in three sites of the central Mediterranean coasts, between Marseille (France) and Balzi Rossi (Italy), the island of Tavolara (Sardinia, Italy) and the promontory of Tindari (Sicily, Italy). The shape of these a...

Abstract We depict the relative sea-level rise scenarios for the year 2100 from four areas of the Italian peninsula. Our estimates are based on the Rahmstorf (2007) and IPCC-AR5 reports 2013 for the RCP-8.5 scenarios (www.ipcc.ch) of climate change, adjusted for the rates of vertical land movements (isostasy and tectonics). These latter are inferre...

The timing of the colonization of Sardinia by mammalian fauna and anatomically modern humans (AMH) is currently under debate. The understanding of the geological and palaeoclimatological conditions that characterized the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene is essential to investigate colonization processes and requires an integrated multidisciplinary...

We present and discuss the genesis, age and evolution of indented landforms carved at sea level in correspondence of carbonatic headlands in three sites of the central Mediterranean coasts, between Marseille (France) and Balzi Rossi (Italy), the island of Tavolara (Sardinia, Italy) and the promontory of Tindari (Sicily, Italy). These landforms can...

Rates of biological evolution on islands are often presumed to exceed rates on the mainland. We tested this postulation by computing the evolutionary rate of head shape in Italian wall lizard Podarcis siculus, occurring on four islands off the coast of Southern Italy. We calculated the evolutionary rate using a phylogenetic tree whose node ages wer...

We present the first detailed survey of tidal notches in the central Mediterranean area, in particular along the coastline of Gozo and Comino (Malta). The Maltese Islands represent one of the few sites in the Sicily Channel which exhibits coastal carbonate rocks. Marine notches on the islands of Gozo and Comino were surveyed by means of a seven day...

During the last 1 million years the global sea level fluctuated between 130m lower than at present to a few metres above present level due to changes in the volume of ice caps. During low sea levels Tertiary karsts were exposed on the continental shelf of the Mediterranean, new karstic solution occurred on others shelves, and new cliffs and caves w...

The accumulation of large boulders related to waves generated by either tsunamis or extreme storm events have been observed in different areas of the Mediterranean Sea. Along the eastern low-lying rocky coasts of Malta, five sites with large boulder deposits have been investigated, measured and mapped. These boulders have been detached and moved fr...

The Mediterranean basin is an important area of the Earth for studying the interplay between geodynamic processes and landscape evolution affected by tectonic, glacio-hydro-isostatic and eustatic factors. We focus on determining vertical deformations and relative sea-level change of the coastal zone utilizing geological, archaeological, historical...

The maritime archaeological indicators play a crucial role for the reconstruction of past relative sea levels in the Mediterranean basin, filling the gap between geology and modern instrumental data. During the last decades several studies have presented different estimates of the relative sea level change in same locations using these indicators....

The accumulation of large boulders related to waves generated either by tsunamis or extreme storm events has been observed in different areas of the Mediterranean Sea. Along the NE and E low-lying rocky coasts of Malta tens of large boulder deposits have been surveyed, measured and mapped. These boulders have been detached and moved from the seaflo...

Recent works (Evelpidou et al., 2012) suggest that the modern tidal notch is disappearing worldwide due sea level rise over the last century. In order to assess this hypothesis, we measured modern tidal notches in several of sites along the Mediterranean coasts. We report observations on tidal notches cut along carbonate coasts from 73 sites from I...

Fixed biological indicators (FBIs) are organisms that live fixed to hard substrates and their living range, or the upper part of it, is located near or at sea level (Fig. 18.1; Laborel and Laborel-Deguen, 2005). When relative sea level (RSL) changes, FBIs experience a modification of their living environmental conditions; they therefore either init...

Detailed mapping of geomorphological and biological sea-level markers around the Capo Vaticano promontory (western Calabria, Italy), has documented the occurrence of four Holocene paleo-shorelines raised at different altitudes. The uppermost shoreline (PS1) is represented by a deeply eroded fossilifer-ous beach deposit, reaching an elevation of ∼2....

Detailed mapping of geomorphological and biological sea-level markers around the Capo Vaticano promontory (western Calabria, Italy), has documented the occurrence of four Holocene paleo-shorelines raised at different altitudes. The uppermost shoreline (PS1) is represented by a deeply eroded fossiliferous beach deposit, reaching an elevation of ∼2.2...

The Mediterranean basin is an important area of the Earth for studying the interplay between geodynamic processes and landscape evolution affected by tectonic, glacio-hydro-isostatic and eustatic factors. We focus on determining vertical deformations and relative sea-level change of the coastal zone utilizing geological, archaeological, historical...

It is always difficult to write about the premature departure of a brilliant colleague and a generous friend as such was Sergio to all of us. Driven by an insatiable curiosity for the sea and its infinite mysteries, Sergio graduated in geological sciences in 1995 with a PhD from the University La Sapienza of Rome, with a dissertation on geomorpholo...

The submerged sill in the Strait of Messina, which is located today at a minimum depth of 81 m below sea level (bsl), represents the only land connection between Sicily and mainland Italy (and thus Europe) during the last lowstand when the sea level locally stood at about 126 m bsl. Today, the sea crossing to Sicily, although it is less than 4 km a...

We present new data collected at the Fronte composite section near Taranto, where the Upper Pleistocene marine sedimentary succession is continuously exposed. Above a fossiliferous calcarenite yielding the “Senegalese” fauna, and abundant Cladocora, the 230Th/U age of which is consistent with Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5, a 6.25 m thick pelitic uni...

The accumulation of large boulders related to large waves generated by tsunami and extreme storm events have been observed in different areas of the Mediterranean Sea. Along the NE and E low-lying rocky coasts of Malta a tens of large boulder deposits have been observed (Furlani et al., 2011; Mottershead et al., 2014). In the Sicily-Malta channel h...

The Fronte Section, a well-exposed stratigraphic succession from southern Italy (Taranto area), provides an uninterrupted marine sedimentary record of MIS 5e. At this location, a highly expanded (8.5 m thick) stratigraphic succession, unconformably overlying Middle Pleistocene marine clay deposits, provides evidence for sea-level fluctuations durin...